TONY HETHERINGTON: 'We have been charged for years for drains we do not have' Could YOU reclaim for bogus water charges?

A.D. writes: I live on a council estate and recently discovered that we are on a soakaway for surface water drainage – and not the national drains that are the general rule.

Yet we have been charged for years for drains we do not have. I emailed Anglian Water and received a £265 refund. I contacted Suffolk County Council and found that all of our estate is on the soakaway.

I asked Anglian Water to backdate my claim to when I moved into my property in Kesgrave, Ipswich, but they say three years is the maximum.

Anglian says it has no access to title deeds, so it relies on customers to appeal if they think they have been overcharged

You must be the most popular man on your estate, except perhaps with Anglian Water. You told both your neighbours about the soakaway and they reclaimed £321 and £365 respectively. That leaves around 400 more homes with a potential claim.

What I found hard to believe was that Anglian Water was charging hundreds of families hundreds of pounds for a service it did not provide. Yet this is exactly what has happened.

The firm said: ‘If a property is solely connected to a soakaway, the owner is entitled to a reduction. If the property was built up to the year 2000 the way to confirm this is by looking at the deeds.’

Share this article

HOW THIS IS MONEY CAN HELP

Anglian says it has no access to title deeds, so it relies on customers to appeal if they think they have been overcharged. But how many people – particularly council tenants – actually have their property title deeds, or know what to look for?

This is like getting to the supermarket checkout and being charged for Champagne you never bought, only to be told that everyone is charged unless they protest.

ASK AN EXPERT

You might think that the watchdog Ofwat would be up in arms about this. Not so. It only expected water companies to grant refunds for the current year, which makes three years of backdated refunds look generous.

Also, Ofwat only expects companies to monitor properties built since 2001. Anyone who lives in an older property is expected to know about soakaways, do their own research and lodge an appeal.

Andy White, senior policy manager at the Consumer Council for Water, told me: ‘All sewerage companies now offer rebates that go beyond the current financial year after we challenged those that did not do so.’

Anglian Water told me: ‘When the surface water rebate was introduced, our regulator Ofwat agreed it would not be cost-effective for us to investigate and survey the many millions of properties we serve to obtain individual connection details.’

Paying the bills: Halifax should have just transfered the cash

As a result of your appeal, the company says it has contacted other residents in your area. But this is clearly a national issue and not a problem that involves just one company and one council estate.

I do wonder how much money the water companies nationally are raking in by charging real money for a fictitious service.

L.A. writes:I went online to use my Halifax debit card to pay off my Marks & Spencer credit card. The screen flashed a message saying the transaction had not gone through. I tried again and got the same message. I then rang M&S and was told both £1,283 payments had gone through.

What happened next was almost as bad. Halifax clawed back one of the payments, but M&S also refunded the money, leaving you still owing the original £1,283.

Halifax said it would take the matter up with M&S but this could take 45 days to sort out. Then you received your next statement from M&S, which of course showed the £1,283 debt.

You spoke to Halifax again, and were told M&S would have to apply for a fresh payment. But M&S told you Halifax should just transfer the cash. Nobody seemed to accept that all you wanted to do was pay your bill.

I asked both companies to investigate. Your card payment has now gone through, and M&S told me: ‘We have spoken to Mrs A and credited her account with an additional £100 by way of an apology.’ Halifax said: ‘We have apologised for the difficulty Mrs A experienced, and arranged a payment of £150 for any inconvenience.’

So, your bill is paid, and you are £250 up.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk.

Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.

Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline?

Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual

We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook.

You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.